One of the things I look for with subjects that have flat surfaces is how the light will play off of those areas in the camera. Soups and stews and things with a lot of moisture readily lend themselves to it. The special images emerge when the light is soft enough to create a striking highlight at a certain angle without being so bright as to overpower the image.

Here, the highlights are manageable. I shot this on an overcast day and then metered my camera to the dark side, knowing the highlights would be sharp, but not too much so. Then I moved around the subject, looking through the lens until I found what I think of as that “butter zone,” where the highlights were popping but the rest of the image was still properly exposed. People laugh when I do this, looking as if I’m stalking the light like a hunter in the bush.